Utilitarianism

The utilitarianism approach was given by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mills which supported
the notion that a decision is morally good if it supports a lot of people and produces the greatest
amount of good. The key principle of utilitarianism is happiness. Utilitarianism argues that
whatever action is done, whether it be good or bad as long as it maximizes happiness it is morally
correct as it benefits most people hence it has a high intrinsic value.

Utilitarianism and Ford Motor Company’s Pinto

In the situation described, Ford was facing a decline in market share due to competition from
Japanese car manufacturers who were making compact, fuel-efficient cars. Lee Iaccoca, Ford's
president at the time, decided to introduce the Pinto, a small car that would be quickly developed
and marketed to compete with Japanese cars. However, the rushed design process meant that the
car's styling considerations dictated engineering design to a greater degree than usual, resulting in
a design flaw that made the gas tank vulnerable to puncture in rear-end collisions.

Despite knowing the safety risks, Ford decided to manufacture the Pinto without changing the
gas-tank design. The company argued that the design met all legal and government standards then
in effect and that modifying the Pinto would be more expensive for customers and society than
leaving its design unchanged. Ford had conducted an internal cost-benefit study that estimated
that modifying the gas tank of each car by surrounding it with a rubber bladder to contain any
gasoline leaks would cost about $11 a unit, resulting in a total cost of about $137.5 million to
modify all the vehicles. Ford managers decided that this cost was not worth the potential safety
benefits and continued to manufacture the Pinto with the flawed design. This decision ultimately
had a dramatic impact on the lives of many people who were involved in accidents in the Pinto,
which caused fires and resulted in numerous injuries and deaths.

Utilitarianism In Ford’s Decision

The Ford Motor Company's decision to manufacture the Pinto without changing the gas tank
design was based on a utilitarian cost-benefit study that primarily reduced costs and benefits to
economic costs and benefits measured in monetary terms. Their claim was not based on self-
interest but on what they believed was best for everyone in society who would be affected by
their decision. Utilitarianism is a theory that advocates for doing what is best for everyone in
society by taking into account all the beneficial and costly consequences of our actions and
choosing the action with the greatest net benefits or lowest net costs. Many business analysts
hold that the best way to evaluate the ethics of a business decision is by relying on this kind of
utilitarian analysis of the decision's social costs and social benefits.
Traditional utilitarianism is a philosophical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart
Mill, which seeks to provide an objective basis for making ethical judgments. According to this
theory, the right action is the one that has the most beneficial consequences for society or at least
minimizes the harmful consequences. Utilitarians believe that we should consider all the available
courses of action, estimate their good and bad consequences, and choose the one that produces
the most positive utility or the least negative utility. Utility refers to the result of combining the
beneficial and costly consequences of an action, which can be positive or negative. To determine
the net sum of utilities produced by an action, we must subtract its negative utility from its
positive utility. Utilitarianism assumes that we can measure and add together the quantities of
benefits produced by an action and then measure and subtract from those benefits the quantities
of harms or costs the action will produce.

Utilitarianism mistakes

Utilitarianism Applied To a Real-World Problem

The excerpt provided discusses the controversial memo written by M Lawrence Summers, the
director of the National Economic Council for President Barack Obama, in 1991 while he was the
chief economist of the World Bank. The memo suggested that the world's welfare would improve
if more of the waste of rich countries were sent to poor countries.

Summers gave four arguments to support this claim. Firstly, he argued that it would be best for
everyone if pollution is shipped to the country where its health effects will have the lowest costs.
The costs of "health impairing pollution" depend on the wages lost when pollution makes people
sick or kills them. Therefore, the country with the lowest wages will be the country where the
health effects of pollution will be lowest. Therefore, with "impeccable" "economic logic," it would
be best for everyone if we dump our toxic waste in the lowest wage countries.

Secondly, Summers argued that adding more pollution to an environment that is already highly
polluted has worse health effects than putting that same pollution into a clean environment where
it can disperse. Thus, transferring pollution out of highly polluted cities such as Los Angeles and
dumping it into under-polluted countries in Africa would make better use of those countries' clean
air quality, which we are currently using "vastly inefficiently," and it would improve "world
welfare."

Thirdly, Summers pointed out that the same pollution would cause more harm in a country where
people have long life-spans than in a country where people die young. When people have long life-
spans, they survive long enough to get diseases such as prostate cancer that people who die young
do not get. Hence, transferring pollution out of countries where people have long life-spans and
dumping it into countries where people die young would reduce the harm caused by pollution.
Finally, Summers argued that pollution can cause "aesthetic" damage, such as dirty-looking air,
that "may have very little direct health impact." Since the wealthy are willing to pay more for
clean-looking air than the poor, clean-looking air is worth more to the wealthy than to the poor.
Thus, it should be possible for people in wealthy countries to find people in poor countries who are
willing to trade their clean air for the money the wealthy are willing to offer. This kind of trade
would be "welfare-enhancing" for both parties.

While Summers' memo was technically correct in terms of its economic logic, it was highly
controversial and attracted a lot of criticism from environmentalists and human rights activists.
The idea of dumping toxic waste in poor countries was widely seen as unethical and immoral.
Despite the controversy, Summers went on to hold several high-profile positions in the US
government and academia.

Advantages of Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism and Economics

The passage discusses how utilitarianism has influenced economics, specifically through the
assumption that individuals always try to maximize their utility and the use of cost-benefit analysis
to determine the desirability of investing in a project. Utilitarian economists argue that a perfectly
competitive market leads to the maximization of individual utility, and therefore, it is better than
any other alternative. The concept of utility in economics is limited to monetarily measurable
costs and benefits, but various methods have been devised to determine the monetary value of
intangible benefits such as the beauty of a forest.

Utilitarianism’s Measurement Problems

Utilitarianism faces difficulties in measuring utility, with founders such as Mill and
Bentham having differing views on what constitutes "good" and "evil" and how to measure
pleasure and pain. Other utilitarians argue for the inclusion of other goods such as
knowledge and beauty, leading to a lack of agreement on what constitutes a "benefit".
This creates problems when dealing with controversial decisions that have different
values and perspectives.

Utilitarianism replies to measurement objections

Defenders of utilitarianism have responses to the measurement objections. Jeremy

Bentham proposed seven quantifiable criteria to measure and compare theU values of
pleasures and pains, including intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity,
and extent. These criteria reduce all benefits to pleasure and all costs to pain, making
them measurable and commensurable.
Utilitarianism problem with Rights and Justice

Utilitarians acknowledge the challenge of measuring utility, but suggest that it can be
partially solved through various methods. However, critics argue that utilitarianism fails
to address moral issues related to rights and justice, as certain actions may be deemed
morally right by utilitarian principles but still unjust or violate people's rights. While
Jeremy Bentham proposed a method of measuring utility through "felicific calculus," other
utilitarians have turned to alternative ways. The Pinto case highlights a counterexample
where utilitarianism overlooks important ethical considerations such as justice and
individual entitlements to freedom of choice and well-being.

Utilitarian Replies to Objections on Rights and Justice

In response to the counterexamples posed by critics of traditional utilitarianism,

utilitarians have proposed an alternative version called rule-utilitarianism, which has
gained significant influence. Rule-utilitarianism limits utilitarian analysis to the evaluation
of moral rules. According to this approach, when assessing the ethicality of a specific
action, one should not ask whether that action will produce the greatest amount of utility.
Rather, one should determine if the action is required by the correct moral rules that
everyone should follow. The rule-utilitarian argues that if the action is required by such
rules, then one should perform it. The correct moral rules are those that would generate
the greatest amount of utility if everyone were to follow them. An example of this can be
found in the section titled "Ethical Application."

Two Parts Of Rule-Utilitarianism

1. An action is considered ethically right if and only if it is required by a correct moral

rule.
2. A moral rule is correct if and only if the total utility that would result from
everyone following the rule is greater than the total utility that would result from
everyone following some alternative rule.

Therefore, the rule-utilitarian maintains that just because a certain action would
maximize utility in a particular situation, it does not necessarily make it right. The rule-
utilitarian contends that the critics of traditional utilitarianism make a mistake by applying
the utilitarian standard to specific actions rather than rules. The rule-utilitarian would
argue that we must utilize the utilitarian standard to determine the correct moral rule in
each situation and then appraise the specific actions involved in the counterexample
solely in relation to that rule. This approach enables utilitarianism to withstand the
counter examples without being undermined.

The strategy of rule-utilitarianism has been criticized by opponents of utilitarianism who

argue that it is simply traditional utilitarianism in disguise. They contend that rules
allowing exceptions will create more utility than rules that do not allow exceptions, but
once a rule permits these exceptions, it will result in the same injustices and violations of
rights that traditional utilitarianism permits. For instance, a rule allowing people to make
an exception whenever it maximizes utility would always generate more utility than a rule
that does not permit any exceptions. The problem with this rule, as the critics assert, is
that it will allow the same injustices and violations of rights as traditional utilitarianism.
Thus, the rule-utilitarianism approach is, in fact, traditional utilitarianism in a different
guise, and the criticisms that apply to one also apply to the other.

Some rule-utilitarians reject the notion that rules producing exceptions result in more
utility. They argue that humans are weak and self-interested, and as a result, they will
exploit any permissible exceptions, leaving everyone worse off. Other utilitarians dispute
the counterexamples presented by the critics, claiming that if killing someone without due
process produces more utility than all other feasible alternatives, then it must be morally
right. Similarly, if subsistence wages are the least harmful means to get a job done in
certain circumstances, then in those situations, subsistence wages are morally right, as
utilitarianism contends.

Utilitarianism encounters two primary obstacles:

1. It demands the measurement of values that may be difficult or impossible to

quantify.
2. It appears to be inadequate when dealing with issues of justice and rights.

Another issue that has not been discussed is that utilitarianism presumes that decision-
makers, such as the Ford managers who designed the Pinto, do not need to consult those
affected by their decisions. If a manager's decision maximizes utility, it is morally right,
even if those impacted have no say in the matter. Critics argue that it is morally wrong to
make decisions that impact people's lives without consulting them.